


Wonderful in Theory

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Comment Fic 2017 [46]
Category: Forever (TV), Merlin (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-29 11:53:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10853445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: Written for the comment_fic prompt: "Any, any, living forever is wonderful in theory, but no one ever explains how everyone around you will die while you keep living."Jo learns how living forever is wonderful in theory.





	Wonderful in Theory

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Small_Hobbit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Small_Hobbit/gifts).



Jo can’t wrap her head around it. Henry, literally centuries old. Abe’s _father_. The man on the ship who died so Isaac’s ancestor could be freed.  
  
It explains a lot of things about Henry, the way he’s out of touch with modern culture, the way his punctilious manners seem like they’re from a different time (they _are_ from a different time), how he knows so much about death, and how he knows so much about history and culture.  
  
But it’s hard to look at Abe, who is visibly decades older than Henry, Abe who served in Vietnam and has a number from a Nazi concentration camp tattooed on the inside of his right arm, and think that Henry raised him.  
  
And it’s hard to imagine what it will be like for Henry, when Abe finally passes on.  
  
But Jo nods and smiles over the mug of coffee Henry keeps politely refilling for her and listens to his tale unfold. It’s insane, but it also makes a disturbing and oddly thrilling kind of sense.  
  
“Have you ever met anyone else?” she asks finally, when Henry and Abe seem to have run out of things to tell her. “Anyone like you.”  
  
Abe gets a sour look on his face, and Henry gets a chagrined look on his face, and then they tell her about the man who calls himself Adam, who has been alive since the time of Julius Caesar, who was setting traps and trying to confirm for himself that Henry is immortal, who was setting traps and experimenting on Henry, to see if he had unlocked the secret of death that eluded them both.  
  
“The psychiatrist? That you were sent to see.” Jo’s grip on the mug tightens.  
  
Henry nods. “Yes.”  
  
“And he - he _killed_ you, in the basement of that pawnshop, while I was right upstairs?”  
  
Henry nods again, tightly.  
  
Jo thinks of how the beat cops at the precinct think it’s a running gag, Henry’s tendency to skinny dip. Now every time a skinny dipper is called in, she will be terrified. Did Henry die again? Or is it someone else, just like him, only more dangerous?  
  
Before Jo can get too caught up in the fear and anger, Henry tells her about his wife, Abe’s mother, Abigail. The woman from the picture she found on the train platform. Jo hears the longing and wistfulness and love in his voice, and she misses Sean so fiercely that for a moment she can’t breathe.  
  
Henry and Abe show her Henry’s downright disturbing death lab (he knows so much about death because he has _died so many times_ ), and the things in the pawn shop that are his, the sentimental value that the antique pieces hold. Henry tells her about his pocket watch, and she realizes, that very first case where their paths crossed - his watch had been on the train because  _he_ had been on the train, and he’d survived the crash.  
  
And finally they show Jo out, and she heads back to her apartment, mind spinning.  
  
Jo realizes just how bizarre Henry’s world must be when, a week into her new perspective on the world and life and death, it’s Abe who takes her aside and says,  
  
“Look after Dad when I’m gone, okay? Now that we know for sure what happened to Mom, I’m all he’s got.”  
  
Jo nods. “Of course. Without question.”  
  
“I don’t just mean bringing him tea and stuff,” Abe says. “You’ll have to learn to keep a towel and a clean set of clothes in your car, for when you have to go pick him up by the river.”  
  
Jo nods again, though nausea roils in her stomach. Pick him up because he died again, Abe means.  
  
He pats her on the hand. “You’ll be the only left who knows his secret.”  
  
The only one besides Adam.  
  
Jo smiles as best as she can and murmurs more reassurances.  
  
In the mornings she stares at herself in the mirror, alert for any grey hairs, any more wrinkles, any sign that she’s farther along the path to that place where Henry can never go.  
  
The first time a call comes in, _skinny dipper_ , Jo’s heart is in her throat. She can hear the chatter in the bullpen behind her, beat cops taking bets about Henry and what his excuse will be this time.  
  
So Jo doesn’t know what to think when the arresting officers escort a shivering, dripping, towel-clad bundle into the bullpen for booking and it’s not Henry but a young man, slender and pale, blue-eyed and dark-haired, with cheekbones that can cut glass and a distant, empty expression.  
  
He says his name is Emrys, doesn’t give a last name. He doesn’t know his address. He has no next of kin - all dead. He doesn’t remember how he ended up in the river.  
  
The beat cops sigh and frown and money changes hands. One of them is dispatched to find clothes for the kid - he is a kid, he doesn’t look more than twenty-three.  
  
Jo, out of pity, brings him a cup of coffee, because he’s the laughingstock of the precinct right now.  
  
“This’ll warm you up.”  
  
He accepts it with thanks.  
  
“What’s the last thing you remember?” she asks.  
  
“Dying. I think. Maybe. Sometimes it’s just like going to sleep. Other times it’s - not.”  
  
Jo’s heart skips a beat. “Dying?”  
  
“Is it really dying, if it’s temporary?”  
  
“Medically, sure,” Jo says. It’s what Henry would say. “People do recover after they’re medically considered dead.” But is this boy what Jo suspects he is?  
  
“Living forever,” the boy says, “is wonderful in theory, but no one ever explains how everyone around you will die while you keep on living.”  
  
Jo bites her lip, leans in. “Have you tried using the weapon that killed you the first time you died?”  
  
Lucidity snaps back into the boy’s gaze. “That’s a common tale that the youngsters peddle around.” He narrows his eyes at Jo. “Are you -?”  
  
“No. But I know someone.” Jo lowers her voice. “Level with me, kid. Because I can help you. The next time you end up in the drink.”  
  
The boy says, “I’m waiting for the world to become a horrible place. For times to get desperate.”  
  
Jo blinks. “Some people say the world already is and times already are.” Was he deranged, living as long as he had, like Adam? Was he a psychopath too, uncaring of mere mortals? “Why would you want that?”  
  
“Because,” the boy says, “when it gets bad enough, when the world needs him, he’ll wake up.”  
  
“He who?” Jo asks.  
  
“He goes by many names. The most common one is Arthur.”  
  
Jo blinks. “Arthur? As in -”  
  
The boy tilts his head, smiles, and looks amused. “Me, I called him _Prat_.”

**Author's Note:**

> Written partially in a response to a meme on DW/LJ, and also for the Shoobies New Frontier Challenge! My first foray into this fandom. :)


End file.
